Auditor General spots irregularities in administering public resources
The Office of the Federal Auditor General (OFAG) has come up with another finding on mismanagement of public resources at public offices.
The Federal Auditor General Meseret Damtie said the office conducted legal audits of 171 offices and 48 branch offices during the current fiscal year.
The House of Peoples’ Representatives (HPR) in its 15th regular session this week reviewed the federal government offices financial legality audit in performance audit reports of the 2014 Ethiopia fiscal year budget.
Meseret presented the financial and legality audits of the institutions in a comprehensive report.
On the report she stated that 171 offices and 48 branch government offices have been audited during the current budget year.
She said some of the 73 institutions have some shortcomings, of which 39 of them are due to accounting and regularities and lack of internal control. She further explained that more than 645 million Birr, which is more than their regular budget, has been found in 24 offices without authorization in transfer of funds.
Ethiopian Technical University, Wolayita Sodo, Wollega, Gambella, Wolkitie and Mizan Tepi Universities as well as Ministry of Innovation and Technology have spent over 573.7 million Birr by taking only the institutions did not used more than 10% of the approved budget in their accounting codes, according to the report.
Meseret said that more than 9.5 billion Birr arrears have been found from 9 branches in the Ministry of Revenue and ten branches under the Customs Commission as revenue was not collected in time.
Meseret said more than 139 million Birr has been registered as expenditure at 42 institutions without providing a full-fledged and complete information, adding over 543 million Birr procurements have been made in 14 institutions without following government’s procurement proclamation.
She attributed “The failure to regulate and monitoring on cash and bank account leads to wastefulness of money.”
When audited whether offices are using authorized budget or not in accordance with finance administration and proclamation and identified that utilizing their budget appropriately just by taking only the 10% of the approved budget in their accounting codes, which they have not used, the regular budget is 1.8 billion Birr,” Meseret said.
“We would like to recommend that corrective measures to be taken and compensate and financial errors. We also recommend for correcting the limitations observed with regard to cash and bank account management,” she pointed out.
Regarding the performance audit to more than 505,825 out of the more than 14,000 agricultural machinery on which more than 4.8 billion Birr was spent by Adama agricultural machinery with Ethiopian engineering group are out of service, she said.
Meanwhile, Chairperson of the Standing Committee on Public expenditure Administration and Control with the HPR Christian Tadele urged the institutions to take corrective action in accordance with the audit report of the Auditor General.
“Based on the audit findings of the offices, including those whose names were referred or they have to take corrective measures and are notified the Office of the Auditor General and other institutions for their accountable in every three months,” Christian said.
